Michael Mansour

Week in Review 18 March 2016 This week has seen an array of email scam attempts reach inboxes worldwide. Our week in review for week ending 18 March 2016 sums up these malicious emails to educate you, in hopes of keeping your data safe. As usual, MailShark highly recommends deleting any of these emails (or similiar)…

100 million records used to hack 20 million Taobao users Taobao.com is a Chinese buying-and-selling site, like eBay in the US. Taobao is owned by China’s online giant, Alibaba, and offers what’s known as C2C, or consumer-to-consumer, retail. In the online C2C world, where you’re not buying from a website, but rather through it, regular sellers…

Cybercrime Week in Review 19 December 2015 Understanding bitcoin – the virtual currency of choice for cybercriminals and terrorists (#PhishLabs) Bitcoin is a decentralized, P2P network-based virtual currency that has only grown in popularity and controversy since its creation in 2008. It is believed that more than 100,000 legitimate businesses accept Bitcoins and 95 percent of…

Cybercrime Week in Review 12 December 2015 Analyzing Bartalex – A Prolific Malware Distributor (#PhishLabs) Bartalex is a name that continues to appear in a cyberthief’s arsenal as one of the most popular mechanisms for distributing banking Trojans, ransomware, RATs, and other malware. The SANS ISC recently published a very interesting technical analysis of Bartalex.…

Cybercrime Week in Review 28 November 2015 ProtonMail comes back online, shores up DDoS defenses (#CSO) ProtonMail, the Switzerland-based encrypted email service, has found its footing again after a wild ride over the past week. After Paris Attacks, Beware Rush to Weaken Crypto (#Bank Info Security) The Paris attacks have provoked security questions about whether…

Cybercrime Week in Review 14 November 2015 ISIS supporter Cyber Caliphate takes over 54,000 Twitter accounts (#ZDNet) ISIS sympathizers have launched an attack against the FBI, CIA and hijacked over 54,000 Twitter accounts in retaliation for a drone strike which killed a British ISIS extremist. Ransomware Now Gunning for Your Web Sites (#KrebsOnSecurity) One of…

Cybercrime Week in Review 31 October 2015 CISO’s Guide to Spear Phishing Defense Podcast (#PhishLabs) Everyone’s talking about business email compromise, but what they aren’t talking enough about is what’s at the root of these attacks – spear phishing. Joseph Opacki of PhishLabs discusses how security leaders must respond to the threat. Scammers up Their…

Ransomware Operation Racked Up $325M in Damages, Security Firms Say A group of security firms known as the Cyber Threat Alliance analyzed CryptoWall, finding that it has caused at least $325 million in damages to hundreds of thousands of victims. The latest version of the CryptoWall ransomware program has raked in more than $325 million…

Cybercrime Week in Review 24 October 2015 Analyzing Spear Phishing Attacks (#PhishLabs) Once an attack is detected, it needs to be analyzed to determine the best mitigation strategy. The objective of the Analyze phase is to quickly establish sufficient threat context to drive the appropriate next action. Magento sites targeted by Neutrino exploit kit (#CSO)…

12 New Malware Strains Discovered Each Minute G DATA researchers discovered a 64.8 percent spike of new malware strains as compared to the first half of 2014. This averages out to 12 new strains per minute. In all, the total number of malware strains this year is expected to be well above the level of…